October 2007 Entries
While I was visiting MSR Cambridge this week with some other people from Redmond, Beth put up the Beta 2 version of the Visual Basic Language specification on our developer center--so she got to beat me to the announcement! This updated language specification corresponds to Visual Studio 2008 and covers the following major new features: Friend assemblies (InternalsVisibleTo) Relaxed delegates Local type inferencing Anonymous types Extension methods Nullable types Ternary operator Query expressions Object initializers Expression trees Lambda expressions Generic type inferencing Partial methods The following features are not covered but should be shortly: XML Members...
WARNING: This is a speculative post. Caveat emptor. I know that I'm running a great risk of touching the third rail of the VB community by even speculating about this, but it seems like the right time to have a bit of a conversation about the big "D"-word. That is, deprecation. Yes, deprecation. Now before anyone starts freaking out, foaming at the mouth or writing a petition, let me emphasize that my thinking along these lines is entirely within the guidelines discussed in the language specification, which mandates a long and gradual process of deprecation that involves continuing to support...
WARNING: This is a speculative post. Caveat emptor. Last week, one of the VB MVPs asked on a private alias what our thinking was about VB10. As I kind of indicated in my previous entry, I don’t think we have a clear idea yet of what’s going to be on the table for the next rev—VB 2008 was kind of an aberration in that LINQ was in gestation long before VB 2005 even shipped. But I can say what’s at least on my mind: Hosting or, more generally, opening up the compiler services to the outside world....
Things have been pretty quiet around Panopticon Central since I did a bit of talking about "VBx" back in May. Partially this has reflected the fact that we're at a pretty early stage of thinking about the post-VS 2008 world, so there isn't a lot solid to talk about. Partially this has reflected the usual shifts in emphasis and strategy that occur around the end of a major product cycle as more and more people start to get freed up to think beyond what they're delivering next month. And partially this has reflected that I've got two kids at home...